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EPA power plant rule has greens pro-Obama

Environmentalists are thrilled--but there are plenty of landmines still lying in wait. | AP Photo

But Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, argues that the administration has had a hugely successful year in issuing environmental rules.

“Lisa Jackson and EPA did a fantastic job, but this would not have happened if not for the tremendous support for these standards from Heather Zichal,” Obama's deputy assistant for energy and climate change, Weiss said. “She really shepherded these standards ... through a road filled with plenty of potholes and potential landmines.”

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He argues, “The Obama administration comes out of 2011 with a very strong record to run on … in protecting public health and creating jobs.”

There are plenty of landmines still lying in wait, though.

As quickly as environmentalists launched their virtual ticker-tape parade for the mercury rule, members of Congress announced plans to stop the rule, which has already been the subject of legislation in 2011.

Some members and a faction of the utility industry have charged repeatedly that the rule’s massive costs will be too steep for industry and the U.S. economy to bear and could have dangerous impacts on electric reliability, and that the health benefits are backed by dubious calculations.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) plans to introduce a disapproval resolution under the Congressional Review Act aimed at stopping the rule, his office said Wednesday. The resolution requires 30 signatures to be placed on the Senate calendar and cannot be filibustered.

He’ll have 60 legislative days after the rule goes into the Federal Register (in the next few days), but given the expected schedule right now, that could stretch out several months into 2012.

Jackson responded, “I wish I was surprised."

"House Republicans have voted over 190 times this year to weaken the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and other of our nation’s environmental laws,” Jackson said, noting that the standards are “22 years in the making” and not a surprise to the industry.

“My belief is that if we started hiring engineers instead of lobbyists, and if we started hiring scientists instead of lawyers, we would be able to do our job for the American people,” Jackson said.

Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) charged that a provision enacted by the president to allow an extra year to achieve compliance for plants that are critical to the electric grid "doesn’t go nearly far enough to protect Americans from the harmful impacts of this costly rule.”

Coats and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) released a bill in November to extend the compliance times of both the EPA's utility MACT and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.

And in a preview of some legal arguments to come, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) charged that the agency “fails to analyze and communicate scientific uncertainties, refuses to make key scientific data publicly available, and short-changes the peer review process. In short, the Administration’s political agenda aims to frighten Americans into supporting a regulatory agenda against affordable energy, while science and objective analysis takes a backseat.”

Nevertheless, Weiss noted, the golden rule of Congress is that “it’s always easier to stop something than it is to pass something.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:31 a.m. on December 22, 2011.

CORRECTION: A quote in a previous version of this story referred to gigawatt hours instead of terawatt hours. EPA estimates say the mercury rule will reduce coal-fired generation by 24 terawatt hours out of 4,305 total terawatt hours in 2020.

Readers' Comments (26)

It costs 4 to 5 cents to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity using natural gas or coal, but 25 to 30 cents to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity from solar. Check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... to watch President Obama say that his energy policy will bankrupt the existing energy industry and cause electricity rates to “skyrocket”. That will not only increase the monthly bill for every home in the country but also increase the cost of all goods and services. He rails at Congress at the prospect of the payroll tax of $1,000 per year but is eager to triple utility bills and raise virtually all other costs as his skyrocketing electricity rates ripple through the rest of the economy.

obama has done nothing but kill jobs since his first day in office. His goal is to have everybody dependent on the government. This administration is devoted to killing fossil fuels regardless of the cost to Americans. There is not one alternative fuel that is competitive with oil and natural gas. The technology is not there. The infrastructure is not there. The economics are not there.

lisa jackson has personally done most of the heavy lifting in all of these job losses. The Republican president elected in 2012 should immediately get rid of all of jackson's ridiculous regulations. Regulations are strangling this country and our elected officials just sit on their hands.

"Under my system of cap and trade,electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket" Bend over America,here it comes,if not by law then by regulation.Hope you all enjoy being cold and in the dark.YOU VOTED FOR IT !

The higher the cost of electricity, the more that Obama and the Democrats can keep people addicted to Big Government. It all helps to break the will of the People and bring them to their knees where they can be more easily subjugated.

Obama personally doesn't care what the cost of electricity is since his expenses are paid for by the taxpayers, i.e., Republicans. His mother-in-law lives with them in the White House so she can enjoy the same largesse. I'm surprised he hasn't moved in his aunts and uncles, but they are non-citizen muslims and a bit conspicuous.

The largest source of annual air-borne Hg is from natural sources such as volcanoes, forest fires, and oceans.(3) Emissions from Yellowstone National Park, for example, likely exceed that of all Wyoming coalfired power plants combined.(4) Under current estimates of total annual air-borne sources of Hg into the world cycle, US power plant emissions account for as little as 0.5%.(5)

A new estimate by scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research recently shown that mercury emissions from fires, mainly biomass burning from forests, from the lower 48 U.S. states and Alaska amount to about 44 tons per year.(6) This is of similar magnitude in comparison to the total mercury emissions from U.S. power plants. For another perspective, the 2008 UNEP mercury report gives 26 tons per year as the contribution from the cremation of human remains.(7)

The natural mercury emission from Earth’s crust is an important factor controlling mercury distribution in marine waters and the atmosphere, along with anthropogenic emissions. Main sources of mercury to seas are submarine volcanoes, mud volcanoes and cold gas vents. All current global estimates refer to atmospheric emissions only. Geological processes supplying Hg to soil, oceans, and inland water bodies also need to be quantified and considered in the global mercury budget and its natural cycling. When estimates of all natural sources are considered, including geothermal events under oceans and lakes, US power plants may account for as little as 0.002% of the entire annual world mercury emissions budget.(8)

[edit] Are Mercury levels changing?

From 1990 – 2000, total US anthropogenic Hg emissions decreased by 69 tons (to current level of about 107 tons), while Asia increased by over 500 tons (to current level of about 1204 tons) and Africa increased by about 230 tons (to about 407 tons). Table 5 of Pacyna et al. (2006)(9) reported the top seven mercury emitters in 2000 to be China, South Africa, India, Japan, Australia, U.S.A. and Russia with 604.7, 256.7, 149.9, 143.5, 123.5, 109.2 and 72.6 tons respectively. Again, a fact confirming the relatively small amount of mercury emissions from the U.S. sources, with US emission in 2000 ranked only 6th below even South Africa, India, Japan and Australia. With the most recent mercury emission budget available up to 2005, SPPI notes from the November 10, 2009 press release by the EPA(10) that from “1990 through 2005, [U.S.] emissions of mercury into the air decreased by 58 percent.” Further good news is that the latest projection of mercury emission in 2020 by Pacyna et al. (2010)(11) also suggest very small contribution, if not negligible role, from US industrial emissions.

In the Atlantic Ocean, comparisons of deep-sea fish (i.e., blue hake at depths of 1,000-3,000 m) found no change in tissue mercury concentration from 1880s to 1970s. The authors concluded: “The result supports the idea that the relatively high concentrations of mercury found in marine fish that inhabit the surface and deep waters of the open ocean result from natural processes, not 20th century industrial pollution.”(12)

In the Pacific Ocean, Princeton researchers found no increase in fish tissue mercury levels after comparing tuna samples from 1971 and 1998 (there was actually a minor decline). They expected to find a 9-26% increase. Those authors concluded the likely source of the mercury was deep ocean waters and sediments around geothermal vents: “Our findings that the concentration of mercury in tuna...has not changed over a period of time, during which anthropogenic mercury inputs...have increased, supports the idea that the source of methylmercury in tuna is not in surface waters. [This] provides prima facie evidence that this concentration is not responding to anthropogenic emissions irrespective of the mechanisms by which mercury is methylated in the oceans and accumulated in tuna.”(13)

As for human exposure to mercury (Hg and MeHg) through fish consumption, there is evidence of micro-traces of mercury (equal to and greater than modern levels) present in humans as long ago as 400AD. For example, eight 550-year old mummies from Alaska had mercury levels twice as high as pregnant women in Alaska today.(14)

[edit] What is the safe level (reference dose) of MeHg consumption according to EPA?

A reference dose (RfD) is the amount of a substance that can be consumed each day for a lifetime (70 years) without harm. The EPA mercury RfD is based on inappropriate studies of people who consume whale meat and blubber (a unique diet no one in the US has) containing multiple chemicals (PCBs, cadmium, pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, DDT, etc.) of which mercury is only one. The owners of the raw data refused to release it for scientific review. EPA downplayed studies that found no harm.

Just a little perspective on the problem. I would not be very quick to accept the assertions of the Obama administration's EPA which has a record of using weak or nonexistent "science" to advance a strictly political agenda. I feel we need to replace the politics with an EPA which is divorced from politics and has no agenda except logically using the best available science to put forward rules and regulations to protect our health rather than acting as a adjunct radical political entity. all

But the notation about cutting CO2 pollution from power plants was one of several warning shots environmental groups slipped into their accolades Wednesday, noting that the mercury rule is not all they are hoping to see over the next year. The agency is expected — and under court order — to issue greenhouse gas emissions rules for new power plants in early 2012.

Certainly an incentive for anyone not politically connected at the hip to the corrupt man-made warming industry or sycophantically infatuated with Obama to vote their pocketbooks in 2012.